Fire Nation Lotus - Rebudding
by FangirlForever-N-Love
Summary: After Azula attacks the Gaang at the Western Air Temple, nothing is the same. Zuko is heartbroken, the others don't know what to do, and everyone else is scattered. and who is this "White Lotus"? Second in the Lotus series


(AN: Set before the war ends, but after Azula attacks the Gaang at Air Temple.)

I still don't own Avatar: the Last Airbender!

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White Lotus PoV

I don't know who I am, or where I came from except for the fact that I am not welcome in the Fire Nation. All I know is that I am called 'White Lotus' by some, 'Little Lotte' by my fiancée, and by my name for the most part. My head was hurting from the beginning, as far back as I could remember, which was when I woke up in the bottom of a ravine alone with my only company being a large lump on my head, and my two swords that look as though they fit together to go into the sheath that was on my back.

I had learned all this because somehow or another, the Moon Spirit, Yue, can talk to me. Apparently I can talk to Agni as well, although I am told by Yue that he is angry with me because I let my feelings cloud my obedience to him. I don't know about anything, only that the swords that I woke up with near me feel right to have in my hands. Whether or not I'm a bender… That's not in my knowledge, either.

I don't know my full story, but I hope to be able to tell you as I learn about who I am.

…

Zuko PoV

Lien was gone. We had searched for her when we had returned, but when Katara had said that it was almost impossible for anyone but Aang to survive a fall of that magnitude with nothing to slow them down, I finally felt a final dam inside me break and cried my eyes out. It wasn't the same without Lien, it never had been, and it never would be.

Alas, I'm getting ahead of myself just as she would have done. My name is Zuko, and I'm the Prince of the Fire Nation. The Lien that I keep talking about had been my best friend ever since we were seven, and even though I had only learned of our arranged marriage a few days prior to my helping Aang learn firebending, I was glad that it was to her and not some other nobleman's daughter looking for attention or power. That was one of the reason, another being that we grew up together and that I knew her. She was, in a sense, the Yin to my Yang. She always had been, and we knew that she always would be.

Lien, like me, was a firebender. She was beautiful both inside and out once you got to know her, and she often acted like a child because her mother was abusive to a deadly extreme to her when we were young. My mother had intervened and saved Lien from that awful place, and we had bonded as Lien recovered from her knocking on death's doorstep. Over the years we became inseparable, bonding over our mutual distaste for my younger sister, Azula.

In short, where I went, she followed. This did not stop when my father banished me just after an Agni Kai for speaking out of turn during a war meeting and not fighting him in said Agni Kai. When I went into exile, Lien joined me and we trained together in the art of the Dual Dao swords. It was only after I had decided to help Aang a few weeks ago that she revealed that she was a firebender to me. Her reason for not doing so was because she was learning the forms but had never been able to make a fire of her own until she went to the source of all firebending – dragons.

No, you were not mistaken, I said _dragons_. Long, snake-like creatures with large fangs, bears and a long stripe of fur down their backs and tails, small legs and large wings. If you still don't know what they are, go look them up. She had been taught by my Uncle Iroh in secret, and she had apparently been told to follow his legacy and to keep me in line. Thus, her first order of business was to do the research and then go to the dragons themselves. Words can't describe the power and beauty in he fires that the dragons showed Aang and I.

I should probably tell you who Aang is, now that I'm on this tangent. Aang is the Avatar, the only person in the world that can bend all four elements. Elemental bending is not privy only to the Avatar, but he or she is the only one that can use all four, and the rest of us can use one, if at all. Like Aang's other mentors, I stay with him and help him train while we travel and hide from my father and my home nation, the Fire Nation.

Katara is Aang's waterbending instructor, and she is from the Southern Water Tribe. I've seen her in action, and on the night of the full moon she is terrifying – she was able to do something to a man in a ship that I couldn't quite catch onto, but I could sense that it was an offshoot of waterbending. Katara's brother, Sokka, is not a bender and instead sticks to strategy, his sword that he apparently made, and of course his handy-dandy Boomerang. Like Katara, Toph is also able to use a secondary kind of bending to go with her element. Toph, however, is Aang's Earthbending instructor, and she discovered how to use metalbending during her time of greatest need for it. She also managed to figure out sandbending after sensing some people use it in the desert.

Oh, I forgot to tell you, Toph is blind. She uses the senses and seismic activity in the ground beneath her to "see" and apparently learned earthbending at age six from _her_ element's animal source, the badger moles. Aang, however, learned from her after a long and grueling process since earth is the natural opposite of his native element, Air. Unfortunately, Aang's Airbending teacher has been dead for one hundred years since he and the Air Nomads were exterminated in a mass genocide ordered by my grandfather, Fire Lord Sozin. Thus making Aang the last Airbender alive, at least to our knowledge.

I suppose it could be possible that one of the nomads sensed the danger and sent someone away to hide them and secretly keep the line going, but something tells me that didn't happen. Like Aang lost his paternal role model and Airbending instructor to the war, Katara, Sokka and I lost our mothers to the war. Katara and Sokka's mother died protecting Katara by lying to the Fire Nation soldiers and telling them that she was the Water Tribe's last waterbender when it was really Katara.

My mother, on the other hand, disappeared into the night, never seen or heard from again. All I know is that Azula told me that my grandfather, Fire Lord Azulon, told my father that he had to kill me in order to know the loss of a son since my father had angered him by requesting the throne be passed down to him. The next morning, my mother was gone, Fire Lord Azulon was dead, and my father, the younger brother to my Uncle Iroh, was decreed as Fire Lord because of an apparent wish of Azulon's.

Lien used to always tell me that my father had done what she called 'foul play' and killed his father and then my mother. More often than not she was right, and even though I didn't know it for the longest time, she could speak to spirits and find them where we least expected it. She could sense anything that had been blessed or cursed, or even protected by the Spirits. This was a gift that she usually used sparingly and kept hidden, up until she tried to help rescue the moon Spirit, Tui, in the Spirit Oasis. In the process of recovering after failing, she told Aang, Sokka and Katara her secret just before speaking directly to Yue, the new Moon Spirit since she'd given her life to become it, and La, the Ocean spirit.

But as I was saying before, Lien was gone. She had given battle to many of my sister's soldiers with her dual dao swords and incapacitated many of them before my younger sister, Azula, threw a fireball at her from behind her back. Lien had grabbed a body with one of her swords and put it in front of her to protect herself, but the force of the fireball was too great and she-she fell off the airship.

I vow that no matter what happens, I'll find Azula and make her pay. I vow that no matter what I will find my Lien, dead or alive, for either one of us. Even if I have to bring her corpse back to the Fire Nation and tell the world that she died protecting Aang and me from being killed by Azula, I will find her. She had often told me that I was the most stubborn male on the face of the planet once I set my mind to something.

She was right. Lien was always right, and like she did me, I loved, and still love her with everything that I have.

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